Death Knight: BiS – Shoulder [DPS]

One of the harder items to judge as there are a lot of Plate Shoulders out there. This guide should prove useful on which shoulders are the best in slot.

Blood

Frost

Unholy

Seems weird that a ilevel 200 item is better than your T7.5. Personally I would rather choose the T7.5 as your best item as Haste does little for most Death Knights unless they are DW.

Death Knight: BiS – Neck [DPS]

The strangest thing about neck slot is everything has agility on it with an x amount of attack power. Most have a good amount of hit and crit as well. The question remains what is the best Neck piece for Death Knights. This really depends on your spec more so than anything else as Blood or Unholy will get more advantage from attack power, while Frost (DW) uses more Agility for its stats.

Blood

Frost

Unholy

From the list it shows that Fool’s Trial is the best neck piece for all three specs which comes from Naxx Heroic. The nice thing that it can drop from four bosses, so you have a high chance of obtaining the item.

Death Knignt: BiS – Head [DPS]

I am going to start with Head slot items. Some of these items can be obtainiable via Heroics, while some you will need to raid to get these items. Below is a direct link to the best Head slots for Death Knights. Remember this is DPS, I have yet to plan anything for tanking yet.

Blood

Frost

Unholy

As you can see the best Helm slot is the Fire-Scorched Greathelm which drops from Naxx Heroic. Though if you have the Spiked Titansteel Helm you can see that will last you a long time probably until you get your T7.5 or the Fire-Scorched Greathelm.

BiS Items

Earlier today I decided to make a BiS (Best in Slot) item post for each class. I have been getting a lot of requests for them since my blog started. Now that I am using Death’s Bite on my DK, and have most of the gear to match, I can start working on a BiS post for everybody. I have decided to do this in a schedule over the next few weeks. I have some notes below of what you can expect to see in the next few weeks. My plan is to start with Death Knights and work my way down to Warriors. With patch 3.1 coming in the next few months these posts might not be updated until that time arrives. I am hoping to get even more BiS items once the patch has been released.

Some notes about it:

• BiS means Best in Slot. For Death Knights that usually means that if some Leather gear is better than Plate gear. I will not be posting anything but Plate. I do not see a point in using anything but Plate since you get buffs for your armor, and other talents.
• Things to consider for Death Knights – AP, Crit Rating, Hit Rating, Expertise Rating, Haste Rating and others.
• Everything will be factored by a percentage, over a number.
• These will be based on three factors: Rawr, WoWHead Item Comparison, and Pawn Rating Scales. The majority of the items will be done through WoWHead with opinions from Rawr and Pawn. Also testing will be done too.

Death Knight: 3.1.0 Changes

• Gargoyle and Unholy Blight have swapped talent positions. Gargoyle’s damage has increased and runic power cost per time has decreased.
• Pestilence – this spell no longer causes damage but just spreads diseases. Blood Boil is intended to be the general area attack, and has been changed to be castable on targets with no diseases on them, but does extra damage if diseases are present.
• Unbreakable Armor now absorbs a flat amount of damage that increases as your armor increases. It no longer boosts armor.
• The Frost tree has been shuffled. Among other things, PvP talents such as Endless Winter are closer to the top of the tree where Blood and Unholy death knights can access them.
• Sudden Doom – this talent now procs a Death Coil rather than requiring an additional button click. It works similarly to shamans’ Lightning Overload.
• Magic Suppression and Blood of the North have been reduced to 3 ranks for the same benefit.
• Blood Gorged now grants armor penetration instead of expertise.

So it seems we may have gotten a slight nerf and a slight buff. One of major abilities in Pestilence no longer does damage. This is one change I am not to keen on as Pestilence is not just a disease spreader it is a damage dealer at the same time and is a staple for Unholy Death Knights. Unless your Blood, all Frost and Unholy Death Knights use thier disease to increase their DPS. Blood on the other hand does not need to use diseases as much unless they plan on using Pestilence. I know our diseases do not do very much for us other than lower resistances and do a minor DoT on the target, Pestilence was the major reason why to put diseases on the target. I think we can see some Unholy builds later without the use of diseases.

I am kind of skeptical on the Frost tree. Are they changing it for more DPS and bringing back the DW build that has been very famous, or are they nerfing it even more to where we have to go to Blood or Unholy? I do not like the choice that Blizzard is putting in front of us because they do not see many Blood or Frost Death Knights they will nerf one tree to see other specs be fulfilled. Personally I think that is wrong, as it is our choice on what spec to be. You give us the options, we just execute it.

I am not to sure on the UB and Gargoyle change. Something very much worth testing.

Death Knight: Rotations [Update]

Over the last few weeks I have been doing some extensive testing on rotations and specs to see what 3.08 has given us. After a lot of testing I can finally give you the finalized rotations for all DPS specs. Also note I will not be listing a DW DPS rotation at the moment because there is still a lot of testing there to be done.

Blood

Normal: IT PS HS HS OB DC IT PS HS HS HS HS DC DC
AOE: IT PS Pest BB HS DC HS BB BB HS DC DC

Frost

Normal: PS IT BS BS OB FS PS IT OB OB FS FS
AOE: PS IT Pest BB HB FS

Unholy
Normal: IT PS BS BS SS UB SS SS SS DC DC
AOE: IT PS Pest BB SS UB SS BB BB SS DC DC